Apart from Oscar, who’s insufferable, I don’t argue with anyone any more. Midge and Percy seem to be okay with me checking up on them every now and then. Mummy laughs because I use the same hand signals as Percy. Well, of course I do, I asked him how to tell Mummy I was ready to go for a run when I’d had my cucumber. He told me to leap up onto her coat and pat the corner where her arm joins her body. Now I do that and she knows it’s time for my run. It works!

Usually the morning is the most exciting time of our day. This week it’s been the evening, after it gets dark. There have been lots of bumps and bangs every day. On two nights we had a series of noises going bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang. Very deliberately and evenly. I said to Percy I wished they’d stop. He said he wished they’d stop as well. Then they stopped. They started again later. There have been other bangs and noises too. Mummy says its fireworks, there’s nothing to worry about, and she wishes they would just stop. We get fireworks sounds from the hotel at the end of the village every Saturday and most Thursdays. So we know by now they’re nothing to worry about. But these were closer, and earlier in the evening. Percy says he remembers them from this time last year. We just have to put up with it for about ten days. Mummy gets very cross about it, though.

So, that’s what’s been going on this week. Except that Midge lost a lot of weight this week, a whole 100 grams. Mummy’s taking him to see Auntie Shirley and Uncle Barry in a few days time. She says he’s nearly down to a normal weight for a guinea pig, so there’s nothing to worry about. She thinks it’s his teeth, because he had so much gungy food in his mouth she couldn’t see them. That makes sense, sort of.

We get the fireworks in July. It’s usually just for one day—the big, official fireworks on the East River. The boys and Satanic Conures don’t care much about it, because the noise is pretty muffled in our apartment.

Otherwise, fireworks are illegal in NYC. People do set them off, but they’d be very stupid to do so in our neighborhood, which has a large police presence. It other parts of the country, it’s a real problem for pets and wildlife. Humans are stupid.